A sign on the entrance to the Hatzlacha grocery in Spring Valley warns customers about a child diagnosed with measles who had been in the store. / Peter Carr/The Journal News

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Health officials statewide are working to contain a measles outbreak that apparently started in Brooklyn and now has spread to Rockland.

A child who was in a Spring Valley grocery store Wednesday afternoon has been diagnosed with the highly infectious disease, acting Rockland Health Commissioner Kathy Henry said Friday.

Anyone who was at the Hatzlacha grocery store at 80 West St. between 1:30 and 4:30 p.m. Wednesday is at high risk and should contact a doctor if symptoms occur, Henry said.

Rockland officials learned late Thursday the child had been infected when they were contacted by a local physician.

Health officials suspect the Rockland child’s disease is linked to 34 measles cases reported over the past week or so in the Borough Park and Williamsburg sections of Brooklyn. Experts expect more reports of the disease as the outbreak continues.

“It’s a very transmissible organism,” said Dr. Anil Vaidian, an infectious-disease expert and acting Rockland medical director. “Depending on the conditions, if you had a room full of people who were unvaccinated and they came in contact with an infected person, the majority would come down with it.”

Measles causes fever, runny nose, cough and a rash all over the body. Complications are common.

About one out of 10 children also gets an ear infection, and up to one in 20 gets pneumonia.

For every 1,000 children who get measles, one or two will die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Brooklyn victims ranged from infants to a 32-year-old.

Two people have been hospitalized with complications, and one developed pneumonia and one suffered a miscarriage.

Measles has been essentially eliminated in the United States due to a childhood vaccine, the CDC said.

But about 60 cases are reported each year.

Most occur when someone traveling to another country brings the disease home and infects others.

Measles has been making a comeback in places including the United Kingdom, where unfounded fears of a link between the vaccine and autism based on a discredited study have prompted parents to forgo vaccination.

All the Brooklyn measles cases occurred among members of the Orthodox Jewish and Hasidic community, according to New York City health officials.

Rockland officials intensified efforts to encourage vaccinations in the Jewish community after an outbreak of mumps that started in 2009 in a Sullivan County Jewish summer camp.

A total of 3,502 cases were reported from June 2009 to June 2010 — the largest outbreak nationwide in years.

Of those cases, 449 were in Rockland, mostly in Monsey and New Square.

Jewish leaders and scholars contend nothing in religious law prohibits vaccines and have been working to overcome fears based on the belief that autism and vaccinations are linked.

In Brooklyn, 23 people who contracted measles were unvaccinated, and six had delayed their vaccines.

The Rockland measles victim was too young to get the first of two shots, which is usually administered around the first birthday.

All other members in the child’s family were vaccinated, health officials said.